The Apple Watch picks up where the Nintendo DS’ PictoChat left off: penises

Arguably, Apple’s biggest announcement this year is not the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but its long-awaited smartwatch, aptly called the Apple Watch. While the new iPhones seem like fine yearly iterations of the hardware that keeps us entertained while we’re in the bathroom, the Apple Watch is an entirely new line of hardware for Apple. Cynics would suggest that, aside from perhaps design preference, Apple’s smartwatch doesn’t really offer anything you can’t find on competitive devices. One feature, though, aims to stand out — it just so happens it also stood out on the Nintendo DS a decade ago.

On the Apple Watch, the feature is called Sketch — part of the Digital Touch suite of features. This suite includes a walkie-talkie, customizable vibration messaging similar to tapping out Morse code, and scanning and (creepily) messaging someone your heartbeat. On the Nintendo DS, it’s called PictoChat.

Yes, the collective internet had the same thought when watching Apple’s livestream: people are going to use Sketch to draw penises.

Sketch’s glowy drawings have come a long way since PictoChat, but you can bet it’ll be used the same way.

When PictoChat debuted as a preloaded instant messaging app on the Nintendo DS back in 2004, people took to the platform more quickly than they warmed up to the original DS silhouette. Two camps of PictoChat users quickly formed: people who created intricate, impressive illustrations, and people who drew penises. Unfortunately for fans of the app, it was LAN-only, and thus DS owners could only message in the presence of one another. The lack of online functionality made PictoChat a novelty, but it lived on in Nintendo’s Miiverse, where you can regularly find extremely impressive user-created illustrations. However, due to the public forum nature of Miiverse, the drawings are moderated, and a penis is hard to come by.

Sketch is essentially an illustrated text message — a fun feature for which Apple is hoping users eschew word-based communication. It’s an intelligent addition to the smartwatch, as text input (and arguable usefulness) is the bane of the fledgling industry. Whether or not humanity suddenly and collectively adopts sketch-based communication is up in the air, but to make the smartwatch work as an everyday device, it’s worth finding out. You can, however, bet on one thing that humanity will collectively adopt with Sketch: there are going to be a lot more illustrated penises appearing on wrists in early 2015.